Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, according to the conclusions of two government investigations into the assassination. The 1964 Warren Commission concluded Oswald acted alone; the House Select Committee on Assassinations, during the late 1970s, concluded that while Oswald was the shooter, President Kennedy "most likely was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy". Some critics of the official accounts have claimed that Oswald was not involved at all and was framed, and many conspiracy theories have been developed, but no single compelling alternative suspect has emerged.

Investigations

• The Warren Commission created by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald did assassinate Kennedy and that he acted alone (also known as the Lone gunman theory). The proceedings of the commission were secret, and 3+% of its files have yet to be released to the public, further fuelling speculation about the assassination.
• In 1966 and '67 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison conducted an investigation which culminated in the trial and acquittal of Clay Shaw. It is the only investigation to charge anyone with conspiracy for the murder of JFK.
• A later investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, during the late 1970s, concluded that President Kennedy "most-likely was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy."

The 1981 exhumation

In October 1981, Oswald was subject to an exhumation undertaken by British writer Michael Eddowes (with Marina Oswald Porter's support). They sought to prove or disprove a thesis developed in a 1975 book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy (The book was republished in 1976 in Britain as November 22: How They Killed Kennedy and in America a year later as The Oswald File.)

Related Topics:
Exhumation - British

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The thesis of the trio of books was that when Oswald went to the Soviet Union, he was swapped with a Soviet clone. Eddowes made public the results of his investigation and said it was the most terrifying story imaginable. He claimed that the man who killed Kennedy was not Oswald but another whose first name was Alec, a member of a KGB assassination squad. Eddowes pointed to a number of discrepancies. He pointed out that there were eleven recordings of Lee Harvey Oswald's height. He was 5'11". The autopsy doctors recorded the length of the man Jack Ruby killed in the Dallas jail as 5'9". The autopsy doctors recorded two scars on the cadaver's arm while the real Oswald had three. The pathologists also recorded a deep scar on the inner aspect of the wrist, Eddowes professed the real Oswald had no such scar. At age six, Lee Harvey Oswald had an operation on the mastoid bone of one of his ears. Part of the bone was removed resulting in a depression in the flesh and a dime-sized hole in the skull. Oswald's records in the Marine Corps report this defect. Eddowes pointed out the doctors cut over both mastoid bones to take off the skull to examine the brain. They reported no such depression or hole in the skull.

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When Oswald's body was exhumed, however, there was a major problem. It was discovered the coffin had ruptured and filled with water. The result of this was the body was in a greatly advanced state of decomposition with partial skeletalization. The final results of the exhumation found that the corpse they studied was Oswald's. The finding was based on dental records.

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